Hybrid Classical--Quantum Optimization of Wireless Routing Using QAOA and Quantum Walks

Quantum Physics [Submitted on 1 Apr 2026] Hybrid Classical--Quantum Optimization of Wireless Routing Using QAOA and Quantum Walks Eric Howard, Hardique Dasore, Hom Nath Dhungana, Radhika Kuttala, Samuel Murphy, Emma Soo, Shah Haque Routing in wireless communication networks is shaped by mobility, interference, congestion, and competing service requirements, making route selection a high-dimensional constrained optimization problem rather than a simple shortest-path task. This paper investigates the use of hybrid classical--quantum methods for wireless routing, focusing on the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) and quantum walks as candidate mechanisms for exploring complex routing spaces. The paper examines how wireless routing can be expressed as a constrained graph optimization problem in which routing objectives, flow constraints, connectivity requirements, and interference effects are mapped into quantum-compatible Hamiltonian representations. It then discusses how these approaches can be integrated into a hybrid architecture in which classical systems perform network monitoring, graph construction, pre-processing, and deployment, while quantum subroutines are used for selected optimization components. The analysis shows that the potential value of quantum routing lies primarily in the treatment of difficult combinatorial subproblems rather than end-to-end replacement of classical routing frameworks. The paper also highlights practical limitations arising from state preparation, constraint encoding, oracle construction, hardware noise, limited qubit resources, and hybrid execution overhead. It is argued that any meaningful near-term advantage will depend on careful problem decomposition, compact encoding, and tight classical--quantum integration. Comments: 23 pages, 3 figures Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Networking and Internet Architecture (cs.NI) Cite as: arXiv:2604.01250 [quant-ph]   (or arXiv:2604.01250v1 [quant-ph] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2604.01250 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Eric M Howard PhD [view email] [v1] Wed, 1 Apr 2026 01:48:57 UTC (4,238 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: quant-ph < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-04 Change to browse by: cs cs.NI References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)